Church and State blog: Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

Monday, February 20, 2017

Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

From the update below:

3/16/17

How you manage to do what you do is simply amazing!! And with the pressure on to adjudicate what seems more and more like attacks from a personality from 1984!

Donald A. Collins
Founder, International Services Assistance Fund

County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice

This afternoon District Judge Avent ruled in Declan's claim for compensation against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's, a homeless charity, that data we alleged to be false, fabricated and nonsensical (and left us vulnerable to eviction for non-cooperation with the support provider) constituted no more than "a difference of opinion as to wording" and that no breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 had occurred. Although originally listed for a one-day hearing, the trial only lasted two hours, i.e. one hour short of the preliminary hearing last October. Declan says it was the most hostile atmosphere that he has ever experienced in a courtroom. It left him reeling, he says, after no more than five minutes. At the end of DJ Avent's summation, Declan asked for leave to appeal. "What for?" the judge asked. "Because this is just a difference of opinion as to wording," Declan responded, quoting him verbatim. "No," the judge replied, and that was that.

We are in a supported tenancy because of Declan's physical health condition (and the high levels of harassment and intimidation we routinely face). We were forced to sleep rough on the streets of London for almost 4 years in total from 4 November 2006 to 13 July 2009 and from 14 April 2013 to 17 May 2014. Before we came off the street the second time, Declan was diagnosed with asthma and a chest infection; in fact, he became so weak that on 15 April 2014 the Royal London Hospital wrote: "If possible should try to find accommodation off the street." So when in May 2014 a supported housing tenancy came through (under an internationally acclaimed programme called Housing First run on behalf of the Mayor of London for entrenched rough sleepers), we took it. Because the flat only came with a fridge and cooker, we first had to sink the deposit we had for an accommodation into making it habitable. And that was just the start of things to come....

A difference of opinion as to wording?

For example, by no means exhaustive, this is paragraph 23 of Declan's Witness Statement dated 14 November 2016:

"Still to this day, I do not know the service to which the staff action/intervention "Signposted to another service" referred. No mention was made of the action note in St Mungo's Defence, notwithstanding the extraordinary lengths I had gone before the defence was filed to highlight the seriousness of blatantly retaining data that was false, fabricated and without meaning (vague to the point of having almost any kind of interpretation)."

According to the Information Commissioner's Office, it is a legal requirement for organisations to provide information to people that is concise, transparent, intelligible, easily accessible (not to mention legitimate), and it must use clear and plain language.

Witness statement from Lola Heavey

UPDATE 16 March (10.08pm): Our 21 days to apply for permission to appeal expired four days ago on Monday. We only received DJ Avent's order above in a late post yesterday, and this despite the fact that the Information Commissioner's Office found the Ministry of Justice in breach of the Data Protection Act in respect of an application to contest the court's jurisdiction that we did not receive in a timely manner in a previous case; see my post yesterday, Complaint to the Secretary of State for Justice. We still do not have District Judge Avent's order and today is the 2nd day after the expiration of our statutory 21 days to apply for permission to appeal. Tonight Don Collins, Founder of the Washington DC-based International Services Assistance Fund, writes: "How you manage to do what you do is simply amazing!! And with the pressure on to adjudicate what seems more and more like attacks from a personality from 1984!" Two working days before Declan's hearing over three weeks ago, we were informed by Newham Council that they had suspended our Housing Benefit. It was reinstated the day after the trial. According to the Council, they had been informed by the Department for Work and Pensions that we had vacated. We have had absolutely no dealings whatsoever with the DWP for over three years; see my post of 22 February, Now that Newham Council have de-suspended our Housing Benefit, what will it take to get the Council to acknowledge receipt of a change in our circumstances in the form of a pay rise?

***

We were evicted from our previous flat on 14 March 2013 because according to our then live-in landlady's ex-husband, Dr Nigel McKenzie, a consultant psychiatrist in Highgate Mental Health Centre, our flat was needed for somebody with a mental illness. Former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler also lived with human rights activist Belinda McKenzie in the same political 'safe house' for a couple of years until 2007. According to BBC Panorama, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair"; he was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act. It is unfortunate that Shayler declared himself the Messiah in 2007, became a squatter, and was subsequently ridiculed in the press for changing his name to Delores Kane. A New Statesman article published in September 2006 featuring Shayler and Belinda gives no indication that Shayler believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with him the following year reveals he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007. He has never regained his normal self.

"The MI5 Messiah: Why David Shayler believes he's the son of God" (15 August 2007) https://t.co/nTqlqxonnS
"Call me Delores, says MI5 whistleblower David Shayler" (16 July 2009) https://t.co/tu7yvdh2ko pic.twitter.com/Jl7HsIvUyu
— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) August 20, 2021

"Cross-dressing MI5 whistleblower David Shayler is evicted from farmhouse" (20 August 2009) https://t.co/HuegWpZrbB pic.twitter.com/FlAMSfVYBb
— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) August 20, 2021

The Esquire article below* is mentioned in a Guardian article dated 27 March 2012. It is an eye-opener, highlighting the monitoring and surveillance that Shayler had to live with back in 2000, and the contradictory briefings and slanders that were coming out of the British establishment and the media. The author, Dr Eamonn O'Neill, is a lecturer in journalism at Strathclyde University.

*On 2 May 2013, Issuu removed this pdf from my Issuu account following a copyright complaint by Hearst Communications. I had uploaded the article to my Issuu account in December 2012. In March 2013, when last I checked, the article had been viewed more than 15,000 times. It can be read here.

BBC PANORAMA: The David Shayler Affair (August 1998)

Former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair", according to BBC Panorama. He was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act.

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Monday, February 20, 2017

Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

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